May 2006 - Posts
I got myself a new toy today - the Logitech Cordless Presenter. It's one of the presentation mouse models I blogged about recently that I think will come in really handy in any future talks I give. Now I'll have to find somewhere to talk and something to talk about. Any suggestions?
[Update - I've used the device a few times now and I can highly recommend it. It works beautifully and the timer function really helps]
I'm trying to get one of the WinFX InfoCard samples to work, but when I build I'm getting an invalid reference in the SDK sample to Microsoft.InfoCards. I couldn't find this dll, only the matching xml file, but when I looked in the code it was looking for, amongst other things, the UserCancellationException class. Reflector'ing discovered this class in the System.IdentityModel.Selectors dll, so if you're stuck with this, that's the place to go (at least for now...)
By wierd coincidence I found this very interesting link about bartering and community called OneRedPaperclip.
I also went along to see the Paperclips movie last night and it was absolutely excellent. What an amazing bunch of people and an amazing project. I highly recommend it. If anyone is interested I know of a showing coming up in Milnerton soon.
I was trying to set up a WCF project earlier and when I tried to add a reference, neither System.Runtime.Serialization nor System.ServiceModel was in the list. I browsed to the .net root folder (c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727) but the dll's weren't there either!
I loaded one of the SDK samples, though, and when I right-clicked to Properties on the registered dll, it pointed me at the C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.ServiceModel\3.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\ folder. However, you can't add this file as a reference directly, nor can you go via the C:\WINDOWS\assembly\ list (not that you'd necessarily want to, as this would bind you to a specific version). In the end, I explored via the command line, copied the dlls to a temp folder, and then dropped them into the c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 folder and now it's working.
I'm not sure if this is just a beta issue, but I'm not sure how the dlls vanished. Has anyone experienced this before or have any idea what could have happened?
I'm thinking about getting a presentation mouse to use when giving a session so that I've got more freedom to move around and interact with the audience. I'm currently looking at the following models:
One from Logitech
One from Genius
And one from Targus
The Targus one is the nicest looking, but I'm leaning towards the Logitech. It's got an LCD so I can keep track of the time, as well as vibrating alerts when time is running low and I know timing is something I particularly need to work on. It doesn't have the trackball though...
Has anyone had any experience with these things? Any advice?
Last night we had a joint national video-conference session with S.A. Architect Gauteng and I wanted to say a big Thank You both to Willy-Peter for organising and to everyone who attended and helped to make it a most interesting and beneficial session.
Some very worthwhile points were raised regarding what we could / should be doing with our local architect community and I'm hoping to get more detail up on the S.A. Arch site itself during the next few days.
I've received a couple of emails about
the WCF tutorials I put up a while ago. I've been struggling to get the latest CTP and work has been crazy getting a fairly large project completed. Thankfully, both of these are now sorted out and I'll be working on updating the tut's very shortly, so watch this space.
I've got some shared resources that I like to use across a few projects, like standard icons, stylesheets, etc., and I've got them mapped to a virtual folder off the root in IIS. However, the standard web project approach in 2.0 is to use the Casini web server, so src="/whateverfolder" will map to http://localhost:[whateverport]/whateverfolder, which obviously does not exist.
I've worked out a solution based on what I read on Scott Guthrie's blog at this post and a bit of playing around, and I've got a simple process for a new project. Be aware that this requires you to fall back on the classic reliance on IIS, but you need this anyway for the virtual folder itself (*->). The steps are as follows:
1) Create the physical folder, e.g c:\somefolder\MySolution\MySolution.UI.Web
2) Create a virtual folder in IIS mapping to this folder:
Open the IIS manager, browse to Default Web Site, right click and select New-> Virtual Directory. Give the virtual directory a name (e.g. MySolution.UI.Web), make sure it has Run Scripts ticked as well.
3) In Visual Studio select File-> New -> Web site, and select HTTP as Location, then use the full virtual path, e.g http://localhost/MySolution.UI.Web and you're done
Well, a major project is virtually complete, so I'm hoping to get back into blogging etc. now after an annoying hiatus. Unfortunately, this it's not going to be with a very pleasant post...
I just received a call from my bank in which they stated that they had "noticed on my monthly payments that I was paying for insurance. Would I not like to have them provide me a quote?" Asking around the office I found that other banks do this as well, apparently. From my perspective this is a _serious_ invasion of my privacy and I find it unacceptably disgusting that this is the practice of what is supposedly a leading financial institution in whom we are supposed to place our trust!
Has anyone else in the blogosphere had similar experiences? What are you thoughts? Should / how do we proceed??